City of God, Book 3

I think enough has already been said about moral and spiritual evils, which are to be deplored above all others, to show that the false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the ruin. I see I must now speak of the only evils the heathen dread— famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre, and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. For evil men count as evil only the things that do not make men evil; nor are they ashamed to praise good things and yet remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself. But their gods did not ward off even the only evils the heathen dreaded, even when the gods were worshipped without restraint. For in various times and places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities; and at that time what gods but those did the world worship, except for the one nation of the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the most secret and most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine grace? But to avoid being long-winded, I will say nothing about the heavy calamities that have been suffered by any other nations, and will speak only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by which I mean Rome in the strict sense, and those lands which already, before the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as it were, members of the body of the state.

First, then, why was Troy or Ilium, the cradle of the Roman people (for I must not overlook or disguise what I touched on in the first book ), conquered, taken and destroyed by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped the same gods as they did? Priam, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon. Then it is true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. For the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his bargain. I am surprised that the famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his pay. And as for Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not fitting for him to be ignorant of what was going to happen. For Homer (who lived and wrote before the building of Rome) introduces him as predicting something great for the descendants of Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer says, Neptune also rescued Æneas in a cloud from the anger of Achilles, though (according to Virgil ) All his will was to destroy / His own creation, perjured Troy. Gods as great as Apollo and Neptune, then, unaware of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless people. One may well ask whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons are gods than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself did not fully believe the story, for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the story implies that both were offended by that fraud. If, therefore, they believe their fables, let them blush to worship such gods; if they discredit the fables, let no more be said of the “Trojan perjury;” or let them explain how the gods hated Trojan perjury but loved Roman perjury. For how did the conspiracy of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a city, find such an abundant supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a living by perjury and civil strife? What else but perjury corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators? What else corrupted the people's votes and their decisions in all the cases tried before them? For it seems that the ancient practice of taking oaths has been preserved even in the midst of the greatest corruption, not for the sake of restraining wickedness by religious fear, but to complete the list of crimes by adding perjury.

There is no basis, then, for representing the gods (by whom, as they say, that empire stood, though they are proved to have been conquered by the Greeks) as being enraged at the Trojan perjury. Nor, as still others plead in their defense, was it indignation at the adultery of Paris that caused them to withdraw their protection from Troy. For their habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice, not its avengers. “The city of Rome,” says Sallust, “was first built and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, fleeing their country under the leadership of Æneas, wandered about without making any settlement.” If, then, the gods were of the opinion that the adultery of Paris should be punished, it was chiefly the Romans, or at least the Romans also, who should have suffered; for the adultery was brought about by Æneas' mother. But how could they hate in Paris a crime they did not object to in their own sister Venus, who (not to mention any other instance) committed adultery with Anchises, and so became the mother of Æneas? Is it because in the one case Menelaus was aggrieved, while in the other Vulcan connived at the crime? For the gods, I suppose, are so little jealous of their wives, that they have no scruple about sharing them with men. But perhaps I may be suspected of ridiculing the myths, and not handling so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well, then, let us say that Æneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to admit it; but is Romulus any more the son of Mars? For why not the one as well as the other? Or is it lawful for gods to have intercourse with women, but unlawful for men to have intercourse with goddesses? A hard, or rather an incredible, condition: that what was allowed to Mars by the law of Venus, should not be allowed to Venus herself by her own law. However, both cases have the authority of Rome; for in recent times Cæsar believed that he was descended from Venus no less than the ancient Romulus believed himself the son of Mars.

Someone will say, But do you believe all this? Indeed I do not. For even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories are false, though he does not boldly and confidently say so. But he maintains it is useful for states that brave men believe, though falsely, that they are descended from the gods; for in this way the human spirit, cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both venture more boldly into great enterprises and carry them out more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence secure more abundant success. You see how wide a field is opened to falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have expressed as well as I could in my own words; and how understandable it is that many of the religions and sacred legends should have been invented in a community in which it was judged profitable for the citizens that lies should be told even about the gods themselves.

But whether Venus could bear Æneas to a human father, Anchises, or Mars father Romulus by the daughter of Numitor, we leave as unsettled questions. For our own Scriptures suggest the very similar question, whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, by which the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is, with enormously large and strong men. At present, then, I will limit my discussion to this dilemma: If what their books relate about the mother of Æneas and the father of Romulus is true, how can the gods be displeased with men for adulteries which, when committed by themselves, excite no displeasure? If it is false, even then the gods cannot be angry that men really commit adulteries, which, even when falsely attributed to the gods, they delight in. Moreover, if the adultery of Mars is discredited so that Venus too may be freed from the charge, then the mother of Romulus is left unshielded by the pretext of a divine seduction. For Sylvia was a vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this sacrilege on the Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery on the Trojans. For even the Romans themselves in primitive times used to go so far as to bury alive any vestal who was detected in adultery, while unconsecrated women, though they were punished, were never punished with death for that crime; and so they defended the purity of shrines they considered divine more earnestly than the purity of the human bed.

I add another instance: If the sins of men so greatly incensed those divinities, that they abandoned Troy to fire and sword to punish the crime of Paris, the murder of Romulus' brother ought to have incensed them more against the Romans than the cajoling of a Greek husband moved them against the Trojans: fratricide in a newly-born city should have provoked them more than adultery in a city already flourishing. It makes no difference to the question we now discuss, whether Romulus ordered his brother to be killed or killed him with his own hand; it is a crime which many shamelessly deny, many through shame doubt, many in grief disguise. And we shall not pause to examine and weigh the testimonies of historical writers on the subject. All agree that the brother of Romulus was killed, not by enemies, not by strangers. If it was Romulus who either commanded or perpetrated this crime; Romulus was more truly the head of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans; why then did he who carried off another man's wife bring down the anger of the gods on the Trojans, while he who took his brother's life obtained the guardianship of those same gods? If, on the other hand, that crime was not committed by either the hand or the will of Romulus, then the whole city is chargeable with it, because it did not see to its punishment, and thus committed, not fratricide, but parricide, which is worse. For both brothers were the founders of that city, and villainy prevented one of them from being a ruler. As far as I can see, then, no evil can be ascribed to Troy that justified the gods in abandoning it to destruction, nor any good to Rome which accounts for the gods visiting it with prosperity; unless the truth is that they fled from Troy because they were vanquished, and went to Rome to practice their characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless they kept a footing for themselves in Troy, so that they might deceive future inhabitants who re-peopled these lands; while at Rome, by a wider exercise of their malignant arts, they exulted in more abundant honors.

And surely we may ask what wrong poor Ilium had done, that, in the first heat of the civil wars of Rome, it should suffer at the hand of Fimbria, the worst villain among Marius' partisans, a more fierce and cruel destruction than the Grecian sack. For when the Greeks took it many escaped, and many who did not escape were allowed to live, though in captivity. But Fimbria from the first gave orders that not a life should be spared, and burned up the city and all its inhabitants together. Thus Ilium was repaid, not by the Greeks, whom she had provoked by wrongdoing; but by the Romans, who had been built out of her ruins; while the gods, adored alike by both sides, did simply nothing, or, to speak more correctly, could do nothing. Is it true, then, that at this time also, after Troy had repaired the damage done by the Grecian fire, all the gods by whose help the kingdom stood, “forsook each fane, each sacred shrine?” But if so, I ask the reason; for in my judgment, the conduct of the gods deserved condemnation as much as that of the townsmen deserved applause. For these closed their gates against Fimbria, so that they might preserve the city for Sylla, and were therefore burned and consumed by the enraged general. Now, up to this time, Sylla's cause was the more worthy of the two; for until then he had used arms to restore the republic, and as yet his good intentions had met with no reverses. What better thing, then, could the Trojans have done? What more honorable, what more faithful to Rome, or more worthy of her relationship, than to preserve their city for the better part of the Romans, and to shut their gates against a parricide of his country? It is for the defenders of the gods to consider the ruin which this conduct brought on Troy. The gods deserted an adulterous people, and abandoned Troy to the fires of the Greeks, so that a chaster Rome might arise out of her ashes. But why did they abandon this same town a second time, allied now to Rome, and not making war on her noble daughter, but preserving a most steadfast and pious fidelity to Rome's most justifiable faction? Why did they give her up to be destroyed, not by the Greek heroes, but by the basest of the Romans? Or, if the gods did not favor Sylla's cause, for which the unhappy Trojans maintained their city, why did they themselves predict and promise Sylla such successes? Must we call them flatterers of the fortunate, rather than helpers of the wretched? Troy was not destroyed, then, because the gods deserted it. For the demons, always watchful to deceive, did what they could. For, when all the statues were overthrown and burnt together with the town, Livy tells us that only the image of Minerva is said to have been found standing uninjured amid the ruins of her temple; not so that it might be said in their praise, “The gods who made this realm divine,” but so that it might not be said in their defense, They are “gone from each fane, each sacred shrine:” for that marvel was permitted to them, not so that they might be proved powerful, but so that they might be convicted of being present.

Where, then, was the wisdom of entrusting Rome to the Trojan gods, who had demonstrated their weakness in the loss of Troy? Will someone say that, when Fimbria stormed Troy, the gods were already resident in Rome? How, then, did the image of Minerva remain standing? Besides, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Troy, perhaps they were at Troy when Rome itself was taken and set on fire by the Gauls. But since their hearing is very acute and their movements very swift, they came quickly at the cackling of the goose to defend at least the Capitol, though they were warned too late to defend the rest of the city.

It is also believed that it was by the help of the gods that the successor of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, enjoyed peace during his entire reign, and shut the gates of Janus, which are customarily kept open during war. And it is supposed that this was his reward for appointing many religious observances among the Romans. Certainly that king would have earned our congratulations for so rare a leisure if he had been wise enough to spend it on wholesome pursuits, and, subduing a pernicious curiosity, had sought out the true God with true piety. But as it was, the gods were not the authors of his leisure; but possibly they would have deceived him less if they had found him busier. For the less occupied they found him, the more they themselves occupied his attention. Varro informs us of all his efforts, and of the arts he employed to associate these gods with himself and the city; and in the proper place, God willing, I shall discuss these matters. Meanwhile, as we are speaking of the benefits conferred by the gods, I readily admit that peace is a great benefit; but it is a benefit of the true God, which, like the sun, the rain, and other supports of life, is frequently conferred on the ungrateful and wicked. But if this great favor was conferred on Rome and Pompilius by their gods, why did they never grant it afterward to the Roman empire during even more meritorious periods? Were the sacred rites more effective when they were first instituted than when they were celebrated later? But they did not exist in Numa's time until he added them to the ritual, whereas later they had already been celebrated and preserved so that benefit might arise from them. How, then, is it that those forty-three, or as others prefer it, thirty-nine years of Numa's reign, were passed in unbroken peace, and yet that afterward, when the worship was established, and the gods themselves, who were invoked by it, were the recognized guardians and patrons of the city, we can hardly find during the whole period, from the building of the city to the reign of Augustus, one year — that, namely, which followed the close of the first Punic war— in which, remarkably, the Romans were able to shut the gates of war?

Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have been so widely extended, nor so glorious, except by constant and unremitting wars? A fit argument, truly! Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to be great? In this little world of man's body, is it not better to have a moderate stature, and health with it, than to attain the huge dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments, and, having attained it, to find no rest, but to suffer more pain in proportion to the size of your limbs? What evil would have resulted, or rather what good would not have resulted, if those times that Sallust sketched had continued, when he says, “At first the kings (for that was the first title of empire in the world) were divided in their sentiments: part cultivated the mind, others the body: at that time the life of men was led without covetousness; everyone was sufficiently satisfied with his own!” Was it necessary, then, for Rome's prosperity that the state of things which Virgil condemns should follow: At length stole on a baser age / And war's indomitable rage, / And greedy lust of gain? But obviously the Romans have a plausible defense for undertaking and carrying on such disastrous wars — namely, that the pressure of their enemies forced them to resist, so that they were compelled to fight, not by any greed of human applause, but by the necessity of protecting life and liberty. Well, let that pass. Here is Sallust's account of the matter: “For when their state, enriched with laws, institutions, territory, seemed abundantly prosperous and sufficiently powerful, according to the ordinary law of human nature, opulence gave birth to envy. Accordingly, the neighboring kings and states took arms and assaulted them. A few allies lent assistance; the rest, struck with fear, kept aloof from dangers. But the Romans, watchful at home and in war, were active, made preparations, encouraged one another, marched to meet their enemies — protected their liberty, country, parents by arms. Afterward, when they had repelled the dangers by their bravery, they carried help to their allies and friends, and procured alliances more by conferring than by receiving favors.” This was to build up Rome's greatness by honorable means. But, in Numa's reign, I would like to know whether the long peace was maintained in spite of the incursions of wicked neighbors, or whether these incursions ceased so that the peace might be maintained? For if even then Rome was harassed by wars, and yet did not meet force with force, she might always have used the same means she then used to quiet her enemies without conquering them in war or terrifying them with the onset of battle, and might have reigned in peace with the gates of Janus shut. And if this was not in her power, then Rome enjoyed peace not at the will of her gods, but at the will of her surrounding neighbors, and only as long as they chose not to provoke her with war, unless perhaps these pitiful gods will dare to sell to one man as their favor what does not lie in their power to bestow, but in the will of another man. These demons, indeed, insofar as they are permitted, can terrify or incite the minds of wicked men by a wickedness all their own. But if they always had this power, and if no action were taken against their efforts by a more secret and higher power, they would have supreme power to give peace or the victories of war, which almost always come about through some human emotion, and frequently in opposition to the will of the gods, as is proved not only by lying legends, which scarcely hint at or signify any grain of truth, but even by Roman history itself.

And this same weakness of the gods is confessed in the story of the Cuman Apollo, who is said to have wept for four days during the war with the Achæans and King Aristonicus. And when the augurs were alarmed at the portent, and had determined to cast the statue into the sea, the old men of Cumæ intervened, and related that a similar prodigy had occurred to the same image during the wars against Antiochus and against Perseus, and that by a decree of the senate, gifts had been presented to Apollo, because the event had proved favorable to the Romans. Then soothsayers were summoned who were supposed to have greater professional skill, and they pronounced that the weeping of Apollo's image was propitious to the Romans, because Cumæ was a Greek colony, and that Apollo was bewailing (and so presaging) the grief and calamity that was about to fall on his own land of Greece, from which he had been brought. Shortly afterward it was reported that King Aristonicus was defeated and made prisoner — a defeat certainly opposed to the will of Apollo; and he indicated this even by shedding tears from his marble image. And this shows us that, though the verses of the poets are mythical, they are not altogether devoid of truth, but describe the ways of the demons in a fitting enough style. For in Virgil, Diana mourned for Camilla, and Hercules wept for Pallas doomed to die. This is perhaps the reason why Numa Pompilius, too, when, enjoying prolonged peace, but without knowing or inquiring from whom he received it, he began in his leisure to consider to what gods he should entrust the safe keeping and conduct of Rome, and not dreaming that the true, almighty, and most high God cares for earthly affairs, but remembering only that the Trojan gods which Æneas had brought to Italy had been able to preserve neither the Trojan nor Lavinian kingdom founded by Æneas himself, concluded that he must provide other gods as guardians of fugitives and helpers of the weak, and add them to those earlier divinities who had come over to Rome either with Romulus or when Alba was destroyed.

But though Pompilius introduced so ample a ritual, Rome did not see fit to be content with it. For Jupiter himself did not yet have his chief temple — it was King Tarquin who built the Capitol. And Æsculapius left Epidaurus for Rome, so that in this foremost city he might have a finer field for the exercise of his great medical skill. The mother of the gods, too, came from I do not know where, from Pessinuns; since it was improper that, while her son presided on the Capitoline hill, she herself should lie hidden in obscurity. But if she is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed some of her children to Rome, but left others to follow her. I wonder, indeed, if she was the mother of Cynocephalus, who came from Egypt a long while afterward. Whether also the goddess Fever was her offspring, is a matter for her grandson Æsculapius to decide. But whatever her breed, the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to call a goddess base-born who is a Roman citizen. Who can count the deities to whom the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous and imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers; and, as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and female: for, as among animals, so among all kinds of gods there are these distinctions. Rome, then, enjoying the protection of such a cloud of deities, might surely have been preserved from some of those great and horrible calamities, of which I can mention only a few. For by the great smoke of her altars she summoned to her protection, as by a beacon-fire, a host of gods, for whom she appointed and maintained temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, and thus offended the true and most high God, to whom alone all this ceremonial is lawfully due. And, indeed, she was more prosperous when she had fewer gods; but the greater she became, the more gods she thought she should have, as the larger ship needs to be manned by a larger crew. I suppose she despaired of the smaller number, under whose protection she had spent comparatively happy days, being able to defend her greatness. For even under the kings (with the exception of Numa Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken), what wicked strife must have existed to cause the death of Romulus' brother!

How is it that neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter even then cherished “Rome's sons, the nation of the gown,” nor Venus herself, could help the children of beloved Æneas to find wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this forced on the Romans the lamentable necessity of stealing their wives, and then waging war with their fathers-in-law; so that the wretched women, before they had recovered from the wrong done them by their husbands, received the blood of their fathers as their dowry. “But the Romans conquered their neighbors.” Yes; but with what wounds on both sides, and with what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbors! The war of Cæsar and Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law; and before it began, the daughter of Cæsar, Pompey's wife, was already dead. But with what keen and just grief Lucan exclaims: “I sing that worse than civil war waged in the plains of Emathia, and in which the crime was justified by the victory!” The Romans, then, conquered so that they might, with hands stained in the blood of their fathers-in-law, wrench the miserable girls from their embrace — girls who did not dare to weep for their slain parents, for fear of offending their victorious husbands; and while the battle was still raging, stood with their prayers on their lips, and did not know for whom to utter them. Such weddings were certainly prepared for the Roman people not by Venus but by Bellona; or possibly that infernal fury Alecto had more liberty to injure them now that Juno was aiding them, than when the prayers of that goddess had stirred her up against Æneas. Andromache in captivity was happier than these Roman brides. For though she was a slave, after she had become the wife of Pyrrhus, no more Trojans fell by his hand; but the Romans killed in battle the very fathers of the brides they caressed. Andromache, the victor's captive, could only mourn, not fear, the death of her people. The Sabine women, related to men who were still fighting, feared the death of their fathers when their husbands went out to battle, and mourned their death as they returned, while neither their grief nor their fear could be freely expressed. For the victories of their husbands, involving the destruction of fellow-townsmen, relatives, brothers, fathers, caused either pious agony or cruel exultation. Moreover, as the fortune of war is capricious, some of them lost their husbands by the sword of their parents, while others lost husband and father together in mutual destruction. For the Romans by no means escaped with impunity, but they were driven back within their walls, and defended themselves behind closed gates; and when the gates were opened by trickery and the enemy let into the town, the Forum itself was the field of a hateful and fierce engagement of fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The ravishers were indeed quite defeated, and, fleeing in all directions to their houses, sullied with new shame their original shameful and lamentable triumph. It was at this point that Romulus, no longer hoping for anything from the valor of his citizens, prayed Jupiter that they might stand their ground; and from this the god gained the name of Stator. But not even then would the trouble have ended if the ravished women themselves had not rushed out with disheveled hair, and cast themselves before their parents, and thus disarmed their just rage, not with the arms of victory, but with the supplications of filial affection. Then Romulus, who could not tolerate his own brother as a colleague, was compelled to accept Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as his partner on the throne. But how long would one who disliked the partnership of his own twin brother endure a stranger? So, once Tatius was killed, Romulus remained sole king, so that he might be the greater god. See what rights of marriage these were that fomented unnatural wars. These were the Roman leagues of kindred, relationship, alliance, religion. This was the life of the city so abundantly protected by the gods. You see how many severe things might be said on this theme; but our purpose carries us past them, and requires us to discuss other matters.

But what happened after Numa's reign, and under the other kings, when the Albans were provoked into war, with sad results not to themselves alone, but also to the Romans? The long peace of Numa had become tedious; and with what endless slaughter and harm to both states the Roman and Alban armies brought it to an end! For Alba, which had been founded by Ascanius, son of Æneas, and which was more properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked to battle by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, and in the conflict both inflicted and received such damage that both parties at last grew weary of the struggle. It was then arranged that the war should be decided by the combat of three twin-brothers from each army: the three Horatii stepped forward for the Romans, the three Curiatii for the Albans. Two of the Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curiatii; but the remaining Horatius killed the three Curiatii. Thus Rome remained victorious, but with such a sacrifice that only one survivor returned to his home. Who bore the loss on both sides? Who grieved, if not the offspring of Æneas, the descendants of Ascanius, the progeny of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter? For this, too, was a “worse than civil” war, in which the belligerent states were mother and daughter. And to this combat of the three twin-brothers there was added another atrocious and horrible catastrophe. For as the two nations had formerly been friendly (being related and neighbors), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii; and when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her betrothed, she burst into tears and was killed by her own brother in his anger. To me, this one girl seems to have been more humane than the whole Roman people. I cannot think her to blame for mourning the man to whom she had already pledged herself, or, as perhaps she was doing, for grieving that her brother had killed the man to whom he had promised his sister. For why do we praise the grief of Æneas (in Virgil ) over the enemy cut down even by his own hand? Why did Marcellus shed tears over the city of Syracuse, when he remembered, just before he destroyed it, its magnificence and noonday glory, and reflected on the common lot of all things? I demand, in the name of humanity, that if men are praised for tears shed over enemies conquered by themselves, a weak girl should not be counted criminal for mourning her lover slaughtered by the hand of her brother. So while that girl was weeping for the death of her betrothed inflicted by her brother's hand, Rome was rejoicing that such devastation had been inflicted on her mother state, and that she had purchased a victory with such an expenditure of the common blood of herself and the Albans. Why cite to me the mere names and words of “glory” and “victory?” Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds: weigh them naked, judge them naked. Let the charge be brought against Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge, none like it found: the war was kindled only in order that there Might sound in languid ears the cry / Of Tullus and of victory. This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive for that social and parricidal war — a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when he has spoken with brief but hearty praise of those primitive times in which life was spent without covetousness, and everyone was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on: “But after Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory consisted in the greatest empire;” and so on, which I need not quote now. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory. For, as our Scriptures say, “the wicked boasts of his heart's desire, and blesses the covetous, whom the Lord abhors.” Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, so that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no one tell me that this man or that was a “great” man, because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its share of praise; but I think it would be better to accept the consequences of any laziness, than to seek the glory won by such arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? Who would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it make a difference that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the wide plains were filled with the carcasses not of two gladiators, but of many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed not by the amphitheater, but by the whole world, and furnished a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their posterity, as long as the report of it is handed down? Yet those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it were, theatrical spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied until the sister of the Horatii was added by her brother's sword as a third victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won the day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterward, as a fruit of the victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan gods had formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the Greeks, and after they had left Lavinium, where Æneas had founded a kingdom in a land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed because from it too the gods had migrated, in their usual fashion, as Virgil says: Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine, / Are those who made this realm divine. Gone, indeed, and from now their third asylum, so that Rome might seem all the wiser in committing herself to them after they had deserted three other cities. Alba, whose king Amulius had banished his brother, displeased them; Rome, whose king Romulus had killed his brother, pleased them. But before Alba was destroyed, its population, they say, was amalgamated with the inhabitants of Rome so that the two cities were one. Well, granting it was so, the fact remains that the city of Ascanius, the third retreat of the Trojan gods, was destroyed by the daughter-city. Besides, to produce this pitiful conglomerate of the war's leavings, much blood was spilled on both sides. And how shall I speak in detail of the same wars, so often renewed in subsequent reigns, though they seemed to have been finished by great victories; and of wars that time after time were brought to an end by great slaughters, and which yet time after time were renewed by the posterity of those who had made peace and struck treaties? We have no small proof of this calamitous history in the fact that no subsequent king closed the gates of war; and so, for all their guardian gods, not one of them reigned in peace.

And what was the end of the kings themselves? A flattering legend tells us that Romulus was taken up into heaven. But certain Roman historians relate that he was torn to pieces by the senate for his ferocity, and that a man, Julius Proculus, was bribed to announce that Romulus had appeared to him, and through him commanded the Roman people to worship him as a god; and that in this way the people, who were beginning to resent the action of the senate, were quieted and pacified. For an eclipse of the sun had also happened; and this was attributed to the divine power of Romulus by the ignorant multitude, who did not know that it was brought about by the fixed laws of the sun's course: though this grief of the sun might instead have been taken as proof that Romulus had been killed, and that the crime was indicated by this deprivation of the sun's light; as was in fact the case when the Lord was crucified through the cruelty and impiety of the Jews. It is shown clearly enough that this latter obscuration of the sun did not occur through the natural laws of the heavenly bodies, because it was then the Jewish Passover, which is held only at full moon, whereas natural eclipses of the sun happen only at the last quarter of the moon. Cicero, too, shows plainly enough that the apotheosis of Romulus was imaginary rather than real, when, even while he is praising him in one of Scipio's remarks in the De Republica, he says: “He had acquired such a reputation that when he suddenly disappeared during an eclipse of the sun, he was supposed to have been assumed into the number of the gods, which could be supposed of no mortal who did not have the highest reputation for virtue.” By these words, “he suddenly disappeared,” we are to understand that he was mysteriously done away with by the violence either of the tempest or of a murderous assault. Their other writers speak not only of an eclipse but also of a sudden storm, which certainly either provided the opportunity for the crime, or itself put an end to Romulus. And of Tullus Hostilius, who was the third king of Rome, and who was himself destroyed by lightning, Cicero says in the same book that “he was not supposed to have been deified by this death, possibly because the Romans were unwilling to vulgarize the promotion they were assured or persuaded of in the case of Romulus, for fear that they might bring it into contempt by gratuitously assigning it to all and sundry.” In one of his invectives, too, he says outright, “We have raised the founder of this city, Romulus, to immortality and divinity by kindly celebrating his services;” implying that his deification was not real, but reputed, and called so by courtesy on account of his virtues. In the dialogue Hortensius, too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he says that they “produce the same darkness as covered the death of Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun.” Here you see that he does not shrink at all from speaking of his “death,” for Cicero was more of a reasoner than a eulogist. And what horrible ends the other kings of Rome had, with the exception of Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths! Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Alba, was, as I said, consumed by lightning along with all his house. Priscus Tarquinius was killed by his predecessor's sons. Servius Tullius was foully murdered by his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him on the throne. Nor did such a flagrant parricide committed against Rome's best king drive from their altars and shrines those gods who were said to have been moved by Paris' adultery to treat poor Troy this way, and abandon it to the fire and sword of the Greeks. Indeed, the very Tarquin who had murdered him was allowed to succeed his father-in-law. And this infamous parricide, during the reign he had secured by murder, was allowed to triumph in many victorious wars, and to build the Capitol from their spoils; the gods meanwhile not departing, but staying, and abetting, and allowing their king Jupiter to preside and reign over them in that very splendid Capitol, the work of a parricide. For he did not build the Capitol in the days of his innocence, and then suffer banishment for subsequent crimes; but he won his way by unnatural crime to that reign during which he built the Capitol. And when he was afterward banished by the Romans, and banned from the city, it was not for his own wickedness but for his son's in the affair of Lucretia — a crime perpetrated not only without his knowledge, but in his absence. For at that time he was besieging Ardea, and fighting Rome's battles; and we cannot say what he would have done if he had been aware of his son's crime. Even so, though no one asked or learned his opinion, the people stripped him of the kingship; and when he returned to Rome with his army, the army was admitted, but he was shut out, abandoned by his troops, and the gates shut in his face. And yet, after he had appealed to the neighboring states, and tormented the Romans with calamitous but unsuccessful wars, and when he was deserted by the ally on whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the kingdom, he lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as it is reported, in Tusculum, a Roman town, where he grew old in his wife's company, and at last ended his days in a much more desirable way than his father-in-law, who had perished by the hand of his son-in-law; with his own daughter abetting, if the report is true. And the Romans called this Tarquin not the Cruel, nor the Infamous, but the Proud; their own pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical airs. So little did they make of his murdering their best king, his own father-in-law, that they elected him their own king. I wonder if it was not even more criminal of them to reward such a great criminal so generously. And yet there was no word of the gods abandoning the altars; unless, perhaps, someone will say in defense of the gods, that they remained at Rome for the purpose of punishing the Romans, rather than aiding and benefiting them, seducing them by empty victories, and wearing them out by severe wars. Such was the life of the Romans under the kings during the much-praised epoch of the state which extends to the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus in the 243rd year, during which all those victories, which were bought with so much blood and such disasters, hardly pushed Rome's dominion twenty miles from the city; a territory which could not even compare with that of any petty Gætulian state.

Let us also add to this epoch the one of which Sallust says that it was ordered with justice and moderation, while the fear of Tarquin and of a war with Etruria was impending. As long as the Etrurians aided the efforts of Tarquin to regain the throne, Rome was convulsed with distressing war. And therefore he says that the state was ordered with justice and moderation, through the pressure of fear, not through the influence of equity. And in this very brief period, what a calamitous year was the one in which consuls were first created, when the kingly power was abolished! They did not fulfill their term of office. For Junius Brutus removed his colleague Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus from office and banished him from the city; and shortly after he himself fell in battle, at once killing and killed, having earlier put to death his own sons and his brothers-in-law, because he had discovered that they were conspiring to restore Tarquin. It is this deed that Virgil shudders to record, even while he seems to praise it; for when he says: And call his own rebellious seed / For menaced liberty to bleed, / he immediately exclaims, / Unhappy father! howsoe'er / The deed be judged by after days; / that is to say, let posterity judge the deed as they please, let them praise and extol the father who killed his sons, he is unhappy. And then he adds, as if to console so unhappy a man: / His country's love shall all o'erbear, / And unextinguished thirst of praise. In the tragic end of Brutus, who killed his own sons and, though he killed his enemy, Tarquin's son, could not survive him, but was survived by Tarquin the elder, does the innocence of his colleague Collatinus not seem to be vindicated, who, though a good citizen, suffered the same punishment as Tarquin himself, when that tyrant was banished? For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative of Tarquin. But Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only the blood, but the name of Tarquin. To change his name, then, not his country, would have been his fitting penalty: to shorten his name by this word, and be called simply L. Collatinus. But he was not compelled to lose what he could lose without harm, but was stripped of the honor of the first consulship, and was banished from the land he loved. Is this, then, the glory of Brutus — this injustice, as detestable as it was profitless to the republic? Was it to this that he was driven by “his country's love, and unextinguished thirst of praise?” When Tarquin the tyrant was expelled, L. Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, was created consul along with Brutus. How justly the people acted, in looking more at a citizen's character than at his name! How unjustly Brutus acted, in depriving his colleague in that new office of honor and country, when he might have deprived him of his name, if it was so offensive to him! Such were the ills, such the disasters, that happened when the government was “ordered with justice and moderation.” Lucretius, too, who succeeded Brutus, was carried off by disease before the end of that same year. So P. Valerius, who succeeded Collatinus, and M. Horatius, who filled the vacancy caused by the death of Lucretius, completed that disastrous and funereal year, which had five consuls. Such was the year in which the Roman republic inaugurated the new honor and office of the consulship.

After this, when their fears gradually diminished — not because the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious — that period in which things were “ordered with justice and moderation” drew to an end, and there followed the state of affairs that Sallust briefly sketches in this way: “Then the patricians began to oppress the people as slaves, to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done, to drive them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures, and most of all by interest on debts, and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the constant wars, at last took up arms and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord and strife.” But why should I spend time writing such things, or make others spend it reading them? The terse summary of Sallust is enough to indicate the misery of the republic through all that long period until the second Punic war — how it was distracted from outside by unceasing wars, and torn by civil quarrels and dissensions. So the victories they boast of were not the substantial joys of the happy, but the empty comforts of wretched men, and seductive incitements to turbulent men to concoct disaster after disaster. And do not let the good and prudent Romans be angry at our saying this; and indeed we need neither try to avert nor denounce their anger, for we know they will harbor none. For we speak no more severely than their own authors, and much less elaborately and strikingly; yet they diligently read these authors, and compel their children to learn them. But as for those who are angry, what would they do to me if I were to say what Sallust says? “Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, aspired to supreme power under the plausible pretense of seeking the good of the senate and the people; citizens were judged good or bad without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were considered good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of things.” Now, if those historians judged that an honorable freedom of speech required them not to be silent about the blemishes of their own state, which they have in many places loudly applauded in their ignorance of that other and true city in which citizenship is an everlasting dignity; what is it fitting for us to do, whose liberty ought to be all the greater, as our hope in God is better and more assured, when they impute to our Christ the calamities of this age, so that less instructed and weaker people may be alienated from that city in which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed? Nor do we say anything more horrible against their gods than their own authors do, whom they read and circulate. For, indeed, we have derived all that we have said from them, and there is much more to say of a worse kind which we are unable to say. Where, then, were those gods who are supposed to be justly worshiped for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world, when the Romans, who were lured into their service by lying tricks, were harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul was killed while defending the Capitol, which had been set on fire by exiles and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple of Jupiter, than that crowd of divinities, with their most high and mighty king whose temple he came to rescue, was able to defend him. Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing seditions, was waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the ambassadors who had been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was desolated by dreadful famine and pestilence? Where were they when the people, again distressed with famine, appointed a prefect of the market for the first time; and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine increased, distributed grain to the famishing masses, was accused of aspiring to royalty, and at the request of this same prefect, and on the authority of the aged dictator L. Quintius, was put to death by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse — an event that caused a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they when that very severe pestilence visited Rome, on account of which the people, after long and wearisome and useless supplications to the helpless gods, conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia, which had never been done before; that is to say, they set couches in honor of the gods, which accounts for the name of this sacred rite, or rather sacrilege? Where were they when, during ten successive years of reverses, the Roman army suffered frequent and great losses among the Veians and would have been destroyed but for the help of Furius Camillus, who was afterward banished by an ungrateful country? Where were they when the Gauls took, sacked, burned, and desolated Rome? Where were they when that memorable pestilence caused such destruction, the one in which Furius Camillus also perished, who first defended the ungrateful republic from the Veians, and afterward saved it from the Gauls? Indeed, during this plague, they introduced a new pestilence of scenic entertainments, which spread its more fatal contagion, not to the bodies, but to the morals of the Romans? Where were they when another frightful pestilence visited the city — I mean the poisonings imputed to an incredible number of noble Roman matrons, whose characters were infected with a disease more fatal than any plague? Or when both consuls at the head of the army were beset by the Samnites in the Caudine Forks, and forced to strike a shameful treaty, 600 Roman knights being kept as hostages; while the troops, having laid down their arms, and being stripped of everything, were made to pass under the yoke with one garment each? Or when, in the midst of a serious pestilence, lightning struck the Roman camp and killed many? Or when Rome was driven, by the violence of another intolerable plague, to send to Epidaurus for Æsculapius as a god of medicine; since the frequent adulteries of Jupiter in his youth had perhaps left this king of all, who reigned so long in the Capitol, no leisure for the study of medicine? Or when, at one time, the Lucanians, Brutians, Samnites, Tuscans, and Senonian Gauls conspired against Rome, and first killed her ambassadors, then overthrew an army under the prætor, putting to the sword 13,000 men, besides the commander and seven tribunes? Or when the people, after the serious and long-continued disturbances at Rome, at last plundered the city and withdrew to Janiculus; a danger so grave, that Hortensius was created dictator, — an office they resorted to only in extreme emergencies; and he, having brought back the people, died while still in office — an event without precedent in the case of any dictator, and which was a shame to those gods who had now Æsculapius among them? At that time, indeed, so many wars were being fought everywhere that, because of a shortage of soldiers, they enrolled for military service the proletarii, who received this name, because, being too poor to equip for military service, they had leisure to produce offspring. Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at that time widely renowned, was invited by the Tarentines to take up arms against Rome. It was to him that Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise, jokingly uttered an oracle so ambiguous that, whichever outcome happened, the god himself would be counted divine. For he so worded the oracle that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by the Romans, or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the soothsaying god would securely await the outcome. And then what frightful massacres of both armies ensued! Yet Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would now have been able to proclaim Apollo a true diviner, as he understood the oracle, if the Romans had not been the conquerors in the next engagement. And while such disastrous wars were being waged, a terrible disease broke out among the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery. And Æsculapius, I suppose, excused himself in this matter on the ground that he professed to be arch-physician, not midwife. Cattle, too, similarly perished; so that it was believed that the whole race of animals was destined to become extinct. Then what shall I say of that memorable winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe, that in the Forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days on end, and the Tiber was frozen? If such things had happened in our time, what accusations we should have heard from our enemies! And that other great pestilence, which raged so long and carried off so many; what shall I say of it? Despite all the drugs of Æsculapius, it only grew worse in its second year, until at last they resorted to the Sibylline books — a kind of oracle which, as Cicero says in his De Divinatione, owes significance to its interpreters, who make doubtful conjectures as they can or as they wish. In this instance, the cause of the plague was said to be that so many temples had been used as private residences. And thus Æsculapius for the time being escaped the charge of either ignominious negligence or lack of skill. But why were so many allowed to occupy sacred buildings without interference, unless it was because supplication had long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of gods, and so by degrees the sacred places were deserted by worshipers, and being thus vacant, could without offense be put at least to some human uses? And the temples, which were at that time laboriously recognized and restored so that the plague might be stopped, fell afterward into disuse, and were again devoted to the same human uses. If they had not lapsed into obscurity in this way, it could not have been pointed to as proof of Varro's great erudition, that in his work on sacred places he cites so many that were unknown. Meanwhile, the restoration of the temples produced no cure for the plague, but only a fine excuse for the gods.

In the Punic wars, again, when victory hung so long in the balance between the two kingdoms, when two powerful nations were straining every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined, how many districts and lands far and near were desolated! How often were the victors on either side vanquished! What multitudes of men, both of those actually in arms and of others, were destroyed! What huge navies, too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk by every kind of marine disaster! If we were to try to recount or mention these calamities, we would become writers of history. At that period Rome was greatly disturbed, and resorted to vain and ludicrous expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books, the secular games, which had been inaugurated a century before but had faded into oblivion in happier times, were reinstated. The games consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the pontiffs; for they, too, had sunk into disuse in the better times. And no wonder; for when they were renewed, the great abundance of dying men made all hell rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to sport: for certainly the ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels, and bloody victories — now on one side, and now on the other — though most calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the devils. But in the first Punic war there was no more disastrous event than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was taken. We mentioned him in the two previous books as an incontestably great man, who had earlier conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have put an end to the first Punic war, if an inordinate appetite for praise and glory had not prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthagians harder conditions than they could bear. If the unexpected captivity and shameful bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his surpassingly cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the gods, it is true that they are brazen and bloodless. Nor was the city itself spared very heavy disasters at that time. For the Tiber was extraordinarily flooded, and destroyed almost all the lower parts of the city; some buildings were carried away by the violence of the torrent, while others were soaked to rottenness by the water that stood around them even after the flood had gone. This visitation was followed by a fire which was still more destructive, for it consumed some of the loftier buildings around the Forum, and did not spare even its own temple, that of Vesta, in which virgins chosen for this honor, or rather for this punishment, had been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting life on fire, by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the time we speak of, the fire in the temple was not content with being kept alive: it raged. And when the virgins, scared by its vehemence, were unable to save those fatal images which had already brought destruction on three cities in which they had been received, Metellus the priest, forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and rescued the sacred things, though he was half roasted in doing so. For either the fire did not recognize even him, or else the goddess of fire was there — a goddess who would not have fled from the fire if she had been there. But here you see how a man could be of greater service to Vesta than she could be to him. If these gods could not avert the fire from themselves, what help against flames or flood could they bring to the state of which they were the reputed guardians? Facts have shown that they were useless. These objections of ours would be idle if our adversaries maintained that their idols are consecrated rather as symbols of things eternal, than to secure the blessings of time; and that thus, though the symbols, like all material and visible things, might perish, no damage resulted from this to the things for the sake of which they had been consecrated, while, as for the images themselves, they could be renewed again for the same purposes they had formerly served. But with lamentable blindness, they suppose that, through the intervention of perishable gods, the earthly well-being and temporal prosperity of the state can be preserved from perishing. And so, when they are reminded that even when the gods remained among them this well-being and prosperity were blighted, they are ashamed to change the opinion they are unable to defend.

As for the second Punic war, it would be tedious to recount the disasters it brought on both the nations engaged in so protracted and shifting a war, that (by the acknowledgment even of those writers who have made it their object not so much to narrate the wars as to eulogize the dominion of Rome) the people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered. For, when Hannibal poured out of Spain over the Pyrenees, and overran Gaul, and burst through the Alps, and during his whole course gathered strength by plundering and subduing as he went, and inundated Italy like a torrent, how bloody were the wars, and how continuous the engagements, that were fought! How often were the Romans vanquished! How many towns went over to the enemy, and how many were taken and subdued! What fearful battles there were, and how often did the defeat of the Romans shed luster on the arms of Hannibal! And what shall I say of the wonderfully crushing defeat at Cannæ, where even Hannibal, cruel as he was, was nevertheless sated with the blood of his bitterest enemies, and gave orders that they be spared? From this field of battle he sent to Carthage three bushels of gold rings, signifying that so much of the rank of Rome had fallen that day, that it was easier to give an idea of it by measure than by numbers and that the frightful slaughter of the common rank and file whose bodies lay undistinguished by the ring, and who were numerous in proportion to their lowliness, could be conjectured rather than accurately reported. In fact, such was the scarcity of soldiers after this, that the Romans impressed their criminals on the promise of impunity, and their slaves by the bribe of liberty, and out of these infamous classes did not so much recruit as create an army. But these slaves, or, to give them all their titles, these freed-men who were enlisted to do battle for the republic of Rome, lacked arms. And so they took arms from the temples, as if the Romans were saying to their gods: Lay down those arms you have held so long in vain, in case our slaves can put to good use what you, our gods, have been powerless to use. At that time, too, the public treasury was too low to pay the soldiers, and private resources were used for public purposes; and individuals contributed their property so generously that, except for the gold ring and bulla which each wore, the pitiful mark of his rank, no senator, and much less any of the other orders and tribes, reserved any gold for his own use. But if in our day they were reduced to this poverty, who would be able to endure their reproaches, barely endurable as they are now, when more money is spent on actors for the sake of a superfluous gratification, than was then disbursed to the legions?

But among all the disasters of the second Punic war, none was more lamentable, or more likely to provoke deeper complaint, than the fate of the Saguntines. This city of Spain, eminently friendly to Rome, was destroyed by its fidelity to the Roman people. For when Hannibal had broken the treaty with the Romans, he sought an occasion to provoke them to war, and accordingly made a fierce assault on Saguntum. When this was reported at Rome, ambassadors were sent to Hannibal, urging him to raise the siege; and when this remonstrance was neglected, they proceeded to Carthage, lodged a complaint about the breaking of the treaty, and returned to Rome without accomplishing their object. Meanwhile the siege went on; and in the eighth or ninth month, this opulent but ill-fated city, dear as it was to its own state and to Rome, was taken, and subjected to treatment which one cannot read, much less narrate, without horror. And yet, because it bears directly on the matter in hand, I will briefly touch on it. First, then, famine wasted the Saguntines, so that even human corpses were eaten by some: so at least it is recorded. Then, when they were thoroughly worn out, so that they might at least escape the ignominy of falling into the hands of Hannibal, they publicly erected a huge funeral pyre, and cast themselves into its flames, while at the same time they killed their children and themselves with the sword. Could these gods, these debauchees and gourmands, whose mouths water for fat sacrifices, and whose lips utter lying divinations, — could they not do anything in a case like this? Could they not interfere for the preservation of a city closely allied to the Roman people, or prevent it from perishing for its fidelity to that alliance of which they themselves had been the mediators? Saguntum, faithfully keeping the treaty it had entered into before these gods, and to which it had firmly bound itself by an oath, was besieged, taken, and destroyed by a perjured person. If afterward, when Hannibal was close to the walls of Rome, it was the gods who terrified him with lightning and tempest, and drove him away, why, I ask, did they not interfere like this before? For I venture to say that this demonstration with the tempest would have been more honorably made in defense of the allies of Rome — who were in danger on account of their reluctance to break faith with the Romans, and had no resources of their own — than in defense of the Romans themselves, who were fighting in their own cause, and had abundant resources to oppose Hannibal. If, then, they had been the guardians of Roman prosperity and glory, they would have preserved that glory from the stain of this Saguntine disaster; and how silly it is to believe that Rome was preserved from destruction at the hands of Hannibal by the guardian care of those gods who were unable to rescue the city of Saguntum from perishing through its fidelity to the alliance of Rome. If the population of Saguntum had been Christian, and had suffered as it did for the Christian faith (though, of course, Christians would not have used fire and sword against their own persons), they would have suffered with that hope which springs from faith in Christ — the hope not of a brief temporal reward, but of unending and eternal bliss. What, then, will the advocates and apologists of these gods say in their defense, when charged with the blood of these Saguntines; for they are professedly worshipped and invoked for this very purpose of securing prosperity in this fleeting and transitory life? Can anything be said except what was alleged in the case of Regulus' death? For though there is a difference between the two cases, the one being an individual, the other a whole community, the cause of destruction was in both cases the keeping of their pledged word. For it was this which made Regulus willing to return to his enemies, and this which made the Saguntines unwilling to revolt to their enemies. Does keeping faith, then, provoke the gods to anger? Or is it possible that not only individuals, but even entire communities, perish while the gods are propitious to them? Let our adversaries choose which alternative they prefer. If, on the one hand, those gods are enraged at the keeping of faith, let them enlist perjured persons as their worshippers. If, on the other hand, men and states can suffer great and terrible calamities, and at last perish while favored by the gods, then their worship does not produce happiness as its fruit. Let those, therefore, who suppose that they have fallen into distress because their religious worship has been abolished, lay aside their anger; for it is quite possible that, even if the gods not only remained with them but regarded them with favor, they might still be left to mourn an unhappy lot, or might, even like Regulus and the Saguntines, be horribly tormented, and at last perish miserably.

Omitting many things so that I do not exceed the limits of the work I have set for myself, I come to the period between the second and last Punic wars, during which, according to Sallust, the Romans lived with the greatest virtue and concord. Now, in this period of virtue and harmony, the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and Italy, who had brought the second Punic war to a close with surprising ability— that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest — who had defeated Hannibal and subdued Carthage, and whose whole life is said to have been dedicated to the gods, and cherished in their temples, — this Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to the accusations of his enemies, and to leave his country, which his valor had saved and liberated, to spend the remainder of his days in the town of Liternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile that he is said to have given orders that not even his remains should lie in his ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the pro-consul Cn. Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the luxury of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. It was then that iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used; then, too, that female singers were admitted at banquets, and other licentious abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to speak, not of the evils men voluntarily practice, but of those they suffer in spite of themselves. So I mentioned the case of Scipio, who succumbed to his enemies and died in exile from the country he had rescued, because it is pertinent to the present discussion; for this was the reward he received from those Roman gods whose temples he saved from Hannibal, and who are worshipped only for the sake of securing temporal happiness. But since Sallust, as we have seen, declares that Roman morals were never better than at that time, I therefore thought it right to mention the Asiatic luxury introduced at that time, so that it might be seen that what he says is true only when that period is compared with the others during which the morals were certainly worse, and the factions more violent. For at that time — I mean between the second and third Punic war— that notorious Lex Voconia was passed, which prohibited a man from making a woman, even an only daughter, his heir; I am at a loss to conceive of a law more unjust than this. It is true that in the interval between these two Punic wars the misery of Rome was somewhat less. Abroad, indeed, their forces were consumed by wars, yet also consoled by victories; while at home there were not such disturbances as at other times. But when the last Punic war had ended in the utter destruction of Rome's rival, which quickly succumbed to the other Scipio, who thus earned for himself the surname of Africanus, then the Roman republic was overwhelmed with so many ills, springing from the corrupt morals that prosperity and security produced, that the sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen to have injured Rome more seriously than her long-continued hostility. During the whole subsequent period down to the time of Cæsar Augustus, who seems to have entirely deprived the Romans of liberty — a liberty, indeed, which in their own judgment was no longer glorious, but full of quarrels and dangers, and which was now quite enfeebled and languishing — and who again subjected everything to the will of a monarch, and infused, as it were, new life into the sickly old age of the republic, and inaugurated a fresh régime — during this whole period, I say, many military disasters were sustained on a variety of occasions, all of which I pass over here. There was especially the treaty of Numantia, stained as it was with extreme disgrace; for the sacred chickens, they say, flew out of the coop, and thus augured disaster to Mancinus the consul; just as if, during all these years in which that little city of Numantia had withstood the besieging army of Rome, and had become a terror to the republic, the other generals had all marched against it under unfavorable auspices.

These things, I say, I pass over in silence; but I can by no means be silent regarding the order given by Mithridates, king of Asia, that on one day all Roman citizens residing anywhere in Asia (where great numbers of them were pursuing their private business) should be put to death: and this order was executed. What a miserable spectacle there was then, when each man was suddenly and treacherously murdered wherever he happened to be, in the field or on the road, in the town, in his own home, or in the street, in market or temple, in bed or at table! Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the spectators, and even of the executioners themselves. For what a cruel necessity it was that compelled the hosts of these victims, not only to see these abominable butcheries in their own houses, but even to perpetrate them: to change their expression suddenly from the bland kindliness of friendship, and in the midst of peace set about the business of war; and, shall I say, give and receive wounds, the slain being pierced in body, the slayer in spirit! Had all these murdered persons, then, despised auguries? Had they neither public nor household gods to consult when they left their homes and set out on that fatal journey? If they had not, our adversaries have no reason to complain of these Christian times in this respect, since long ago the Romans despised auguries as idle. If, on the other hand, they did consult omens, let them tell us what good they got from it, even when such things were not prohibited, but authorized, by human, if not by divine law.

But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil interests. The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another, not with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force and arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and devastations were caused in Italy by social wars, servile wars, civil wars! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all the animals used in the service of man — dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and all the rest that are subject to man — suddenly grew wild, and forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and roamed free, and could not be closely approached either by strangers or their own masters without danger. If this was a portent, how serious a calamity must have been portended by a plague which, whether portent or not, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us than their animals were against them.

The civil wars originated in the seditions which the Gracchi stirred up over the agrarian laws; for they intended to divide among the people the lands which were wrongfully possessed by the nobility. But to reform so long-standing an abuse was an enterprise full of peril, or rather, as the outcome proved, of destruction. For what disasters accompanied the death of the older Gracchus! What slaughter ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same fate! For nobles and commoners were massacred indiscriminately, and not by legal authority and procedure, but by mobs and armed rioters. After the death of the younger Gracchus, the consul Lucius Opimius, who had fought him within the city, and had defeated and put to the sword both him and his confederates, and had massacred many of the citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and is reported to have put to death as many as 3000 men. From this we can gather how many fell in the riotous encounters, when the result even of a judicial investigation was so bloody. The assassin of Gracchus himself sold his head to the consul for its weight in gold, as had been agreed beforehand. In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, with all his children, was put to death.

It was a pretty decree of the senate, truly, by which the temple of Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous rising had taken place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen. I suppose it was so that the monument of the Gracchi's punishment might strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders. But what was this but to deride the gods, by building a temple to that goddess who, had she been in the city, would not have allowed herself to be torn by such dissensions? Or was it that Concord was to blame for that bloodshed because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, and was therefore incarcerated in that temple? For if they had any regard for consistency, why did they not instead erect a temple of Discord on that site? Or is there a reason for Concord being a goddess while Discord is not? Does Labeo's distinction hold here, by which he would have made the one a good deity and the other an evil one? — a distinction which seems to have been suggested to him by the mere fact that he saw at Rome a temple to Fever as well as one to Health. But, on the same ground, Discord as well as Concord ought to be deified. The Romans made a hazardous venture in provoking so wicked a goddess, and in forgetting that the destruction of Troy had been caused by her taking offense. For, being indignant that she was not invited with the other gods [to the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis], she created dissension among the three goddesses by sending in the golden apple, which caused strife in heaven, victory to Venus, the rape of Helen, and the destruction of Troy. Therefore, if she was perhaps offended that the Romans had not thought her worthy of a temple among the other gods in their city, and therefore disturbed the state with such tumults, to how much fiercer a passion she would be roused when she saw the temple of her adversary erected on the scene of that massacre, or, in other words, on the scene of her own handiwork! Those wise and learned men are enraged at our laughing at these follies; and yet, being worshippers of good and bad divinities alike, they cannot escape this dilemma about Concord and Discord: either they have neglected the worship of these goddesses, and preferred Fever and War, to whom shrines of great antiquity have been erected, or they have worshipped them, and after all Concord has abandoned them, and Discord has tempestuously hurled them into civil wars.

But they supposed that, in erecting the temple of Concord within the view of the orators, as a memorial of the punishment and death of the Gracchi, they were raising an effectual obstacle to sedition. How much effect it had is shown by the still more deplorable wars that followed. For after this the orators endeavored not to avoid the example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their projects; as did Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius the prætor, and some time after Marcus Drusus, all of whom stirred up seditions which first of all caused bloodshed, and then the social wars by which Italy was grievously injured, and reduced to a piteously desolate and wasted condition. Then followed the servile war and the civil wars; and in them what battles were fought, and what blood was shed, so that almost all the peoples of Italy, which formed the main strength of the Roman empire, were conquered as if they were barbarians! Then even historians themselves find it difficult to explain how the servile war was begun by a very few, certainly fewer than seventy gladiators, what numbers of fierce and cruel men attached themselves to these, how many of the Roman generals this band defeated, and how it laid waste many districts and cities. And that was not the only servile war: the province of Macedonia, and subsequently Sicily and the seacoast, were also depopulated by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe either the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or the wars they later waged against Rome?

But when Marius, stained with the blood of his fellow citizens, whom the rage of party had sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and driven from the city, it had scarcely had time to breathe freely when, to use the words of Cicero, “Cinna and Marius together returned and took possession of it. Then, indeed, the foremost men in the state were put to death, its lights quenched. Sylla afterward avenged this cruel victory; but we need not say with what loss of life, and with what ruin to the republic.” For of this vengeance, which was more destructive than if the crimes it punished had been committed with impunity, Lucan says: “The cure was excessive, and too closely resembled the disease. The guilty perished, but when none but the guilty survived: and then private hatred and anger, unbridled by law, were allowed free indulgence.” In that war between Marius and Sylla, besides those who fell in the field of battle, the city, too, was filled with corpses in its streets, squares, markets, theaters, and temples; so that it is not easy to reckon whether the victors killed more before or after victory, to become victors or because they were victors. As soon as Marius triumphed, and returned from exile, besides the butcheries perpetrated everywhere, the head of the consul Octavius was exposed on the rostrum; Cæsar and Fimbria were assassinated in their own houses; the two Crassi, father and son, were murdered in one another's sight; Bebius and Numitorius were disemboweled by being dragged with hooks; Catulus escaped the hands of his enemies by drinking poison; Merula, the flamen of Jupiter, cut his veins and made a libation of his own blood to his god. Moreover, everyone whose greeting Marius did not answer by giving his hand, was at once cut down before his face.

Then came the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of the cruelties of Marius. Not only was his victory purchased with great bloodshed, but when hostilities were finished, hostility survived, and the subsequent peace was as bloody as the war. The younger Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater atrocities to the earlier and still recent massacres of the elder Marius. For when Sylla approached, and they despaired not only of victory, but of life itself, they massacred friends and enemies indiscriminately. And, not satisfied with staining every corner of Rome with blood, they besieged the senate, and led the senators out of the curia to their deaths, as if from a prison. Mucius Scævola the pontiff was killed at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to because no spot in Rome was more sacred than her temple; and his blood nearly extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the constant care of the virgins. Then Sylla entered the city victorious, after having slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat, but by an order, 7000 men who had surrendered, and were therefore unarmed; so fierce was the rage of peace itself, even after the rage of war had died out. Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Sylla killed whomever he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond counting, until it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some to survive, so that the victors would not be left without subjects. Then this furious and indiscriminate license to murder was checked, and much relief was expressed at the publication of the proscription list, even though it contained the death warrant of two thousand men of the highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number was indeed saddening, but it was a consolation that a limit was set, and the grief at the numbers killed was less than the joy that the rest were secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could not help lamenting the extreme torture applied to some of those who had been doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of the executioners; men treating a living man more savagely than wild beasts tear an abandoned corpse. Another had his eyes dug out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture. Some celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one was collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual criminal would be condemned to death. These things were done in peace when the war was over, not so that victory might be won more quickly, but so that, once won, it might not be taken lightly. Peace vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war overthrew armed forces, peace killed the defenseless. War gave the one who was attacked the freedom to strike back if he could; peace granted to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.

What fury of foreign nations, what barbarian ferocity, can compare with this victory of citizens over citizens? Which was more disastrous, more hideous, more bitter to Rome: the recent Gothic and the old Gallic invasion, or the cruelty displayed by Marius and Sylla and their partisans against men who were members of the same body as themselves? The Gauls, indeed, massacred all the senators they found in any part of the city except the Capitol, which alone was defended; but they at least let those in the Capitol buy their lives, though they could have starved them out if they could not storm it. The Goths, again, spared so many senators that it is surprising they killed any at all. But Sylla, while Marius was still living, established himself as conqueror in the Capitol, which the Gauls had not violated, and from there issued his death-warrants; and when Marius had escaped by flight, though destined to return more fierce and bloodthirsty than ever, Sylla even issued decrees of the senate from the Capitol for the slaughter and confiscation of the property of many citizens. Then, when Sylla left, what did the Marian faction hold sacred or spare, when they gave no quarter even to Mucius, a citizen, a senator, a pontiff, even as he clasped in a pitiful embrace the very altar in which, they say, the destinies of Rome reside? And that final proscription list of Sylla's, not to mention countless other massacres, dispatched more senators than the Goths could even plunder.

With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these disasters to their own gods, and impute the present ones to our Christ! These bloody civil wars, more distressing, by the admission of their own historians, than any foreign wars, and which were pronounced to be not merely calamitous, but absolutely ruinous to the republic, began long before the coming of Christ, and gave birth to one another; so that a concatenation of unjustifiable causes led from the wars of Marius and Sylla to those of Sertorius and Cataline, one of whom was proscribed by Sylla, the other brought up by him; from this to the war of Lepidus and Catulus, one of whom wished to repeal the acts of Sylla, the other to defend them; from this to the war of Pompey and Cæsar, of whom Pompey had been a partisan of Sylla, whose power he equaled or even surpassed, while Cæsar condemned Pompey's power because it was not his own, and yet exceeded it when Pompey was defeated and killed. From him the chain of civil wars extended to the second Cæsar, later called Augustus, in whose reign Christ was born. For even Augustus himself waged many civil wars; and in these wars many of the foremost men perished, among them that skillful manipulator of the republic, Cicero. Caius [Julius] Cæsar, when he had conquered Pompey, though he used his victory with clemency, and granted to men of the opposite faction both life and honors, was suspected of aiming at royalty, and was assassinated in the curia by a party of noble senators, who had conspired to defend the liberty of the republic. His power was then coveted by Antony, a man of very different character, polluted and debased by every kind of vice, who was strenuously resisted by Cicero on the same plea of defending the liberty of the republic. At this point that other Cæsar, the adopted son of Caius, and later, as I said, known by the name of Augustus, had made his début as a young man of remarkable genius. This youthful Cæsar was favored by Cicero, in order that his influence might counteract that of Antony; for he hoped that Cæsar would overthrow and destroy the power of Antony, and establish a free state — he was so blind and unaware of the future: for that very young man, whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed Cicero to be killed as the seal of an alliance with Antony, and subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the republic in defense of which he had made so many orations.

Let those who feel no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and there rose the mingled fragrance of “Sabæan incense and fresh garlands;” the priests were clothed with honor, the shrines were maintained in splendor; sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies, were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But those who most unforgivably slander this Christian era are the very men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians so that they might be safe. In short, not to repeat the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their number others that it would be tedious to list, I am convinced of this one thing, and every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge it, that if the human race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars brought on Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, not one of those who now accuse us would have failed to attribute them to our religion. How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had been received and spread before the invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters, which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies, if they had happened since the Christian era, to whom but the Christians would they have imputed them as crimes? I do not speak of those things that were more surprising than harmful — oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other sex; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works, and which do not injure, but only astonish men. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones — not hailstones, but real stones — this was certainly bound to do serious damage. We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighboring shore, caused the sea to boil, so that rocks were burned up, and the pitch of ships began to run — an incredibly surprising phenomenon, but at the same time no less harmful. They report that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders by the same violent heat, so that the houses of the city of Catina were destroyed and buried under them — a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tribute for that year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a province of Rome, was struck by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when they were drowned and washed up on the shore the air was polluted, and so serious a plague resulted that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone, they say, 800,000 people perished, besides a much greater number in the neighboring districts. At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, only ten survived. Yet which of these disasters, if they happened now, would not be attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet they attribute none of these things to their own gods, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that those who formerly worshiped them were not preserved from these serious disasters.